The present invention relates generally to the field of databases, and more particularly to optimizing space management of tablespaces in database systems.
Databases are computerized information storage and retrieval systems. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a database management system (DBMS) which uses relational techniques for storing and retrieving data. Relational databases are organized into tables which consist of rows and columns of data. The rows are formally called tuples or records. A database will typically have many tables, and each table will typically have multiple tuples and multiple columns. Tables are assigned to tablespaces.
A tablespace is a storage location, such as on a direct access storage device (i.e., magnetic or optical disk drives for semi-permanent storage), where the actual data underlying a database object is kept. It provides a layer of abstraction between physical and logical data and serves to allocate storage for all DBMS managed segments. The tablespace is a collection of storage containers (e.g., files) used to store data for database objects (e.g., relational tables).